


In Keeping Her Humanity Repressed

by ialpiriel



Series: Shadows Get Long [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Bird Motif, Caesar's Legion, Cannibalism, Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 19:22:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4888987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ialpiriel/pseuds/ialpiriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Food is easy enough, when the Legion doesn’t want you dead. What’s harder is being what you are, when all the people who could’ve told you what that means are dead now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Keeping Her Humanity Repressed

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on the [Fallout Kinkmeme](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/5646.html?thread=14418446#t14418446).
> 
> (If you're worried, I promise: there's no sex here.)

They have been walking for five days. She’s kept count, careful to ration her thoughts. She follows what the Old Raven had told her, before the Legion had absorbed them. Old Raven had talked about walking with dark things, about being your bird. Hard to be your bird when your bird is dead in a puddle of irradiated water, two days back. Hard to be your bird when you can’t even look down at your body and see it written on you.

Hard to be your bird when your bird follows death.

At least, it used to be.

Maybe too easy, now. Too easy to be her carrion-bird self when death comes behind and goes before.

Old Raven fell at the wayside yesterday, her old legs refusing to carry her further. The raven chicks she kept in her coat had peeped at her as the Legionaries had bashed her skull in. Legionaries had snapped the birds necks, too, laughed as the birds went limp with their pink mouths open and yawing.

She had watched.

Both Eagles still walk, of course, because Eagles are strong and have always walked for farther than the others. All four Seagulls walk, clinging to each other, eyes wide and chests caved, familiar with this, each in her own way.

Two of the three Owls are dead. Too weak, their heads too far into their night to live their days. Last Owl is barely an Owl anymore--skin too thick, eyes too sharp, body too ready to fight. An Eagle now, was waiting for her bird’s death so she can make her rites again. Bird on her skin is dead already, scratched off with a needled cactus pad during a fit, months ago. Bird on her arm died the first night, when the Legionaries had spooked and killed it with a spear.

Magpies are all dead, their Old World hands and feet not ready for this New World walk.

Vultures walk.

Vultures always walk.

Their birds still live, flying behind, gorging themselves on birds and women alike.

The vultures are followed by ravens.

“Ravens eat death, live where other things die,” Old Raven had said, when the Little Raven was eleven years old and had made her decision about what she was. Old Raven had patted her head, braided her hair back, grinned. Old Raven's bird had hopped around them, cawing at them while they talked, until Old Raven had scolded him. “Ravens are smart. Ravens live because they know how, Little Raven. A Raven will walk away from another’s death without a guilty soul.”

She had nodded then, understood.

Not everyone loved what they were.

“Carrion birds,” the adopted Vulture had snorted, after the Old Raven had suggested she was a Vulture. “I ain’t no carrion bird. I ain’t eatin’ dead shit.” Old Raven had explained more.

Adopted Vulture had still scoffed at what she was, as much as she doted on her bird. Had scoffed at others, too--Eagles too showy, Magpies too entranced with the old world, Seagulls too hungry. Songbirds too small and fragile. “Ravens are carrion-eaters too,” she had said, narrowing her eyes at the girl who would be the last standing Raven. “You just don’t want to think you’re as ugly as a Vulture is.”

She hadn’t tried to argue.

Live smarter, not better.

***

It is the fifth night, and her carefully-rationed thoughts, about things that are not the dirt beneath her feet or the men around her or her destination, have turned again to her carrion-bird self.

The Legionaries set up a guard around the camp, and the others go to sleep. The Legionaries flop down on bedrolls, yell things at each other that she doesn’t understand yet. They fall asleep soon. The Birds sleep, too. The vultures and the ravens continue to circle.

No one cries, not after the first night.

She couldn’t get far, not in this desert, not if she tried to run away. She’s not one of the Pigeons, so rare with their impeccable sense of direction. Best they had was their Old Raven, walked so many miles she knew their whole world like she knew the wrinkles in the bend of her arm. Old Raven was teaching her, showing her the stars while the Owl-Eagle sat with them, voice quiet, body still, eyes sharp.

She can follow a trail well enough, though, two dozen sets of feet in the dirt.

The guard patrol is easy enough to avoid--they’re not expecting people to come behind them. All the people back there are dead. Rotting. Picked to pieces by one bird or another.

Old Raven’s body is further than she thought it was, her rationed thought carrying her further through the day than she remembered. Birds have picked out Old Raven’s eyes already. Little Raven wonders if it was Old Raven’s who did it. Could be--smart bird, left when he could. She hasn’t seen him since, but that doesn’t mean he’s gone. Hard to pick out a missing toe on a bird thirty feet above your head, especially when there’s soldiers yelling at you to move.

She rolls Old Raven onto her back, shoves the heavy leather coat off her shoulders. It flumps to the ground, limp and dead as its owner.

Little Raven paws through Old Raven’s things. Old Raven always kept a knife on her, something small, something that someone who didn’t know her wouldn't find.

She finally finds it sewn into the lining of her coat, between the lining and the outer shell. The stitches rip easily, and New Raven shakes the switchblade loose. Flips it open, considers.

She’s not an Eagle, too much blood through her heart. She’s not a Vulture, with too many years.

She’s a Raven.

_A carrion-bird_ , the adopted Vulture’s voice rings through her head again. _Just don’t want to be Vulture-ugly_.

The first cut is through clothes, but the second is through flesh.

The vultures and the ravens circle in closer.

***

She leaves the switchblade with what remains of Old Raven’s corpse. She couldn’t use it anyway, not against a dozen and a half Legionaries, not without training. She gets back long before dawn, the trip back shorter than the trip out.

They don’t notice her absence, or at least they never say they do. Neither do the Birds. One bumps her shoulder, offers some small word of comfort, when the start their walk again the next morning. She nods and accepts it. The Magpie who birthed her is six days dead, now, Old Raven a full day.

They walk them into a camp full of other women and men and children, almost all of them cowering. The ones who don’t cower watch them with dead eyes.

The New Raven--the last Raven, she knows, somewhere deep in her still-full belly--squares her shoulders and raises her chin.

She will not survive proudly, not the way the Eagles try.

She will not survive on scraps, like the Seagulls.

Or with the quiet acceptance of the Vultures.

She’ll survive smarter.

All she has to do is survive smarter.

***

The man who called himself Kilborn--who Lucinda hadn’t bothered to name--is bloody on the ground. Service rifle Lucinda had plucked off an NCR trooper at the correctional facility was his undoing, the same way a shotgun killed three of the other troopers. Service rifle killed five, altogether. No great body count. There are more soldiers inside the outpost, laughing and drinking. Lucinda leaves them, though. Another time. When she has more bullets, a machete, a bird. Leave her mark here.

This _Kilborn_ , though.

Had looked at her first in surprise, then fear, then anger, before she shot him in the throat.

She prods his limp body with one boot, waits to see if Kilborn responds. When he doesn’t, she crouches. Removes his hat. Looks it over before placing it on her own head with a snort. Checks Kilborn’s eyes, touches the cornea with a finger. No response.

Really dead, then.

Knife from its sheath; knife through clothes; cut shirt and undershirt discarded.

Belly muscles, easiest, curved line under the diaphragm and around to the hip bones. No trouble for a sharp knife, no bone to catch it. Cuts only deep enough to sever skin, muscle, one layer of connective tissue. Not deep enough to puncture gastrointestinal organs. No one needs a body cavity full of shit they have to clean off their meal. No one wants to dodge stomach acid.

Cuts tissue from the muscle, peels back the panel of Kilborn’s stomach. Peels easy, once the tissue holding it all together is cut.

Muscle from skin, next, knife at an angle, skin side down on the ground. Muscle comes off in chunks, and she pops them in her mouth as she goes. The longer the body lays here, the worse things will get. She may be a Raven, but she doesn’t have the stomach for true carrion. Tried, once, spent the next week heaving sick.

Arms, next--bicep meat is good meat, and it comes off in easy strips. Eats some of them, too, is reminded of her need to watch herself when she hears a burst of laughter from near the bar’s doors. They don't notice her here, crouched behind the ticket booth. That, at least, is a small mercy.

She cuts long strips off Kilborn’s thighs, chops them smaller. There was a flock of ravens around Nipton. Maybe she can feed them, until they know she’s a friend. Maybe dry and smoke the meat over a campfire, keep it for later. Feed it to someone else, since she’s eaten her fill. She wonders vaguely if the NCR or the Legion would take to it worse. Could be either.

She’s heard rumors of the sort of _strange_ one of the casinos on the Strip is, though, remembers the same stories from the mouths of Legionaries returning from wiping out tribes that did things like this.

Never anything definite.

Just always their vague sense of unease.

Eyes on each others’ hands, watching, watching, watching. Eyes watching the ex-tribals, waiting for any indication. Eyes on each others’ plates, eyes narrowed in accusation, eyes seeing a thousand miles into the distance.

Never look up, never see the vultures and the ravens circling above their heads.

Never see the vultures circling, steeped in death and with their hungry bellies aching to be filled.

Never look back to see the ravens following in their wakes.


End file.
